Three Things Direct Marketers Can Do Now To Increase Engagement.

David Ogilvy con­tended that the most impor­tant word in adver­tis­ing is TEST.

While he spoke mainly about pre-testing prior to launch, test­ing is more impor­tant than ever as bud­gets shrink and the demands for account­abil­ity are growing.

From email mar­ket­ing to social media, mar­keters need to focus their efforts on devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies that are tied to their busi­ness objec­tives, so con­ver­sions can be mea­sured, and cam­paigns can be opti­mized to deliver bet­ter results over time.

It’s com­mon sense, and a mar­keters dream come true … but one that’s not eas­ily realized.

Here are three things that you can do right now to move your orga­ni­za­tion in the right direction:

1. Choose What You Measure.

There’s a say­ing that goes, “Mea­sure twice. Cut once.” But if you are mea­sur­ing every­thing, the only thing you can be sure of is that it won’t be clear what to cut, or why. Teth­er­ing the data you are min­ing to your busi­ness objec­tives, mar­ket­ing strate­gies and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tac­tics will give you the fil­ters you need to cre­ate a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and a bet­ter idea how you are doing.

2.    Pay Atten­tion. Consistently.

Gen­er­at­ing daily, weekly or monthly reports serve a pur­pose: they give the impres­sion that work is being done. But the real work is in what actions you take after ana­lyz­ing the data – not in the gen­er­a­tion of pretty reports.

By not view­ing the data with your objec­tives, strate­gies and tac­tics in mind, reports basi­cally cre­ate the data equiv­a­lent of high­way hyp­no­sis, whereby you’ll just keep on dri­ving when you should be turn­ing, exit­ing, or pulling over to check your map.

3. Deter­mine An Effec­tive Opti­miza­tion Strategy.

This step likely takes more work than the pre­vi­ous two, because at its core, it involves get­ting agree­ments from other depart­ments and team leads to take action on the data that you ana­lyze once the answer is star­ing you in the face.

If we jump back to the high­way hyp­no­sis metaphor for a minute: we are all crea­tures of habit and we gen­er­ally get used to “the way things are.” And while data reports are inter­est­ing, they aren’t always tied to action­able outcomes.

First and fore­most, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that although a lot of work goes into the plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and launch of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions plans, expect­ing all pro­grams to be extremely suc­cess­ful in the real world is not real­is­tic. Although, it doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to mean a total “do-over” either.

It’s sim­pler than it seems

If you’ve cov­ered off on the first two steps rec­om­mended above: choos­ing what you mea­sure and watch­ing the data as it comes in as it relates to your strate­gies, tac­tics and objec­tives rel­a­tive to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion streams you are push­ing out, you will be able to quickly iden­tify what isn’t work­ing. And start­ing over sim­ply becomes a tweak, not an over­haul of your process and program.

In my next post, I’ll cover Social Media: How this new mar­ket­ing chan­nel is evolv­ing and how direct mar­keters can use it to strengthen their online cam­paign plan­ning and exe­cu­tions to deliver more conversions.